The local police force had unwittingly stumbled across what is believed to be the largest volume of the opioid ever seized in North America. “An amount as small as a grain of sand can kill you,” Dr Karen Grimsrud, Alberta’s chief medical officer, told reporters after traces of carfentanil were found in the bodies of two men who had overdosed. What could widen the scope of the investigation are the concerns the US voiced over carfentanil last year. Given the purity of the substance seized, police estimated that the package could contain as many as 50m lethal doses – enough to wipe out the entire population of the country. The tragedy shed light on another facet of the danger carfentanil poses to the public, said Escamilla.

Source: The Guardian November 12, 2017 09:56 UTC